So I'm teaching this class on how Rock music evolves from the 50's onward....

I'm having students learn a batch of songs in each of what I consider the major periods of Rock and Roll and in preparing the classes and digging deeper into a subject that I thought I had a pretty good handle on I'm discovering that there is a ton of really cool music and information to ingest.

Rock didn't spring into existence fully formed, so just getting a handle on the R&B, Blues, Country and Jazz influences that simmered together in the styles formation has been a great education. Just reading through this is pretty cool: http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_timeline-r1.html

It's a full band class so I have to teach (and usually play at some point) all of the instruments so I'm also getting a better idea of where those parts came from and what the people that we as guitarists usually ignore when we learn something like "Johnny B Goode" are playing

I think that it's probably a great thing for anyone who plays rock to step back and study since no matter what period of rock music your are influenced from you'll get a better idea of where your favorite players are coming from by studying their influences, their influences influences and so on.

Since this is an ongoing class I'll probably be blogging my experiences both in teaching the class and my own research to prepare the students. I've had to play a ton of these styles and songs over the years but never this comprehensively so a class that I thought would be a snap to teach is turning a bit into a research project/personal education, too....it's kind of nice to be challenged like this at work.

And yes, the picture is not of me but Jeff Garvin teaching another of our classes and I thought it looked cool

That's awesome. I took a similar class in college, except we didn't play the music. We just watched video clips and listened to CDs. It was really badass because it was taught by a local Austin legend, Cliff Antone.

That's awesome. I took a similar class in college, except we didn't play the music. We just watched video clips and listened to CDs. It was really badass because it was taught by a local Austin legend, Cliff Antone.

But your idea is still cooler.

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I just wanted to give the music I teach in the class a context and the experiment I ran over the summer with the kids classes went really well so I thought I'd offer a "full size" version of the class. The way it's shaping up the students will have almost a full set of music in each genre to play...my 4-5 song idea is a little too limited to really get a full picture of the 50's Rock and Roll for instance....I'm assuming that it'll go about the same for each phase. By the end of the class the students will probably know 80-100 songs if they stick all the way through and will be able to gig a full night without too much work

I'm wondering about this class. The bassist looks very surly.
The more weight Mr. Mark Wein is losing, I think the more he thinks he can uh, take you out.
Please be careful. With this kind of traffic you might find the low spark of high-heeled boys influence,
or wake up after a three year stupor, a book in your lap, Manfred Mann's Chapter Four, and blame him.
That's when the trouble will start.

Jack Blacks' "School of Rock" isn't what I expected, after seeing his t.v. episodes of "Heavy D",
but it was a sweet, parental guidance rock music movie. His King Kong is my favorite film with him,
and I like his tiny role as a blast victim in the "Mars Attacks" movie, where he starts inhaling his own blast smoke before he skeletizes.
"School of Rock" is the first movie to make me really like the credits.

So I woke up this morning with this class on my mind....the musicianship is more sophisticated than I remember it being from Guitarists, Bassist, Drummers, etc. Then I remembered that much of this was recorded with studio pros of the day - guys like Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer, Hank Garland, Danny Cedrone. Follow on eras of rock bands were full of garage musicians or players that were imitating the licks from this era more than being educated in multiple styles and bringing them to the table from a "pro" level of musicianship. Bands like early Beach Boys with their Chuck Berry infatuation, early Beatles recordings before they found their stride and garage bands like the Troggs come to mind....some of these bands obviously trancended this and some didn't but the first generation of rock recordings were more "pro" recordings than I remember.

Cool! Is this class part of the series you mentioned a week or two ago?

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Yep!

I've had the two kids classes going for a while but the adult class on Mondays started the first week of November and we have a Saturday afternoon class starting the first week of December....it's really going well

Man I wish I could be a part of that. It would be cool if we could figure out an online version. I am not sure how practical that is with a band format though.

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Judging from the response I really should come up with an online version. I'd have to think about how I would present it though since playing the tunes with a band is one of the things that I think is best about the class. Also, I'd be teaching copywritten material online so I'd need to get clearances for all of that music. If I can do it reasonable I think it would be killer though...

I would love to take this class if I weren't in the Funk class. I love the history and learning how different influences infiltrated the music. In college, to fulfill my anthropology requirements I took History Of Blues ay San Diego State. At Cal State Fullerton, I took History of Jazz with Fred Katz.

So I started a new class on Saturday afternoon, and like how all of these things go I changed how I teach the first few songs and try to get students to relate them to a 12 bar blues (teaching chord progressions, 4 bar phrases and forcing the issue of playing time through the intro pretty hard) and the music went a lot smoother.

I've also doubled the amount of songs in the first phase where we are covering early Rock and Roll because the more I think about it the idea of 4-5 songs covering this era is ludicrous and way too narrow a focus. I'm thinking that if we spend more time here we are laying groundwork for the later phases both musically and with the students technical skills sets.

I'm also toying with the idea of having an inexpensive pedalboard for the studio for the students to try the appropriate sounds (such as playing with a slap echo or a fuzz) for the songs before they buy them...

So I started a new class on Saturday afternoon, and like how all of these things go I changed how I teach the first few songs and try to get students to relate them to a 12 bar blues (teaching chord progressions, 4 bar phrases and forcing the issue of playing time through the intro pretty hard) and the music went a lot smoother.

I've also doubled the amount of songs in the first phase where we are covering early Rock and Roll because the more I think about it the idea of 4-5 songs covering this era is ludicrous and way too narrow a focus. I'm thinking that if we spend more time here we are laying groundwork for the later phases both musically and with the students technical skills sets.

I'm also toying with the idea of having an inexpensive pedalboard for the studio for the students to try the appropriate sounds (such as playing with a slap echo or a fuzz) for the songs before they buy them...